Playing Sonic Heroes is like being caught in successive red lights. As soon as one goes green you speed up, only to get stuck at the next one, then the next one, and finally fifty more. It dangles the promise of going somewhere, then yanks it back and shoves Knuckles, Amy and the gang in your face. Sadly, they steal Sonic's spotlight, as well as the chance to break from the monotony that's plagued his legacy.

Sonic Heroes is all about teamwork. You're required to choose one of four three-character teams and use their strengths to complete the levels. For example, Team Sonic consists of everyone's favorite blue hedgehog and his friends Knuckles the Echidna and Miles "Tails" Prower. Sonic just blazes through everything and most of the levels were designed to showcase his ludicrous speed. However, you'll soon encounter certain obstacles and enemies Sonic can't get past, and this is where his buddies come into play. If you need to glide or break things, you switch to Knuckles, but if you need to fly and stun hard to reach enemies, you'll call on Tails's special abilities. You can switch characters on the fly, and the game has hints as to which you should use when you come to puzzles. Unfortunately, the other teams are exactly the same, though they're made up of different animals. Each one has its fast, strong and airborne team member, and while objectives may differ (mostly with Team Chaotix) the levels are pretty much the same.

In tradition with the past Sonic games, the levels are very colorful and detailed. Most of the time they don't make sense (just why is there a floating casino in the sky?) but Sonic games were never logical to begin with. All I want to do is go fast, and most times you can do that. In fact, it's rather obvious that it's the faster characters the levels were designed for because they feature ramps, jump pads and numerous loops that showcase the Gamecube's processing power and Sega's knack for utilizing it. In that respect, when you're quickly dashing about the game's a lot of fun, but Sega spoils what could've been a triple A title with this teamwork nonsense. For every shining moment comes several annoying ones where you have to stop, switch characters and do something boring like breaking rocks. What's worse, you can't switch characters in the air, meaning that if you're in a tight spot, you wont be able to use that character until the one you're controlling either hits the floor or the others catch up (you can briefly lose them). It's terrible, especially since you can manipulate the icons at the top right corner, so I can switch to Tails but I can't control him yet. This has caused me many deaths, but it's not the only issue I have with the game. The camera, while not as bad as other games of this type, can sometimes go a little crazy and produce some bad shots. Worse, you can't manually adjust it and move at the same time. If you need to examine your surroundings you can look around, but try and walk and it automatically flips back to where you were.

If the camera wasn't bad enough, the game is full of glitches. Characters sometimes fall through floors and the game clips all over the place. One of my favorite glitches was when Knuckles walked to the end of a sheet of glass (which covered a hole), yet he still teetered as if he would fall.

Are you still interested? Perhaps the character voices will turn you off. We're talking preschoolers here. Any respect I may have had for Sonic's ensemble cast was immediately dashed when some of them spoke. Tails is especially annoying, and I often wondered whether I should bust out the CD player instead of listening to them.

There's no doubt in my mind that Sonic Heroes will sell, primarily because of Sonic's face on the box and the memories of his adventures of yester year. In fact, it pains me to give it such a low score, because there are genuine moments when the gameplay works, but having to continuously stop to perform menial and frustrating tasks only serves to irritate, making this the perfect rental. Go no further.